


Of Mirrored Addictions

by TwilightLegacy13



Category: The Seven Realms Series - Cinda Williams Chima
Genre: (in the Southbridge Guardhouse), Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, Drug Addiction, Drug Use, F/M, Friendship, Heavy Angst, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Torture, Miscommunication, Multi Chapter, Velvet has asthma in this btw, but hopefully you all like it, this is not a happy fic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-24
Updated: 2021-01-09
Packaged: 2021-03-10 02:02:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,905
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27705959
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TwilightLegacy13/pseuds/TwilightLegacy13
Summary: When Raisa ana'Marianna is kidnapped by Cuffs Alister, she escapes to find herself cornered by Raggers intent on robbing her.  One is a boy she used to know, so many years ago that she has long since forgotten.  But what if those memories weren't so far from the surface, and her identity was betrayed to an old childhood friend?Or, Velvet recognizes Raisa when she runs into the gang on the streets of Ragmarket.
Relationships: Velvet Gray/Cat Tyburn
Comments: 8
Kudos: 4





	1. The Nature of Royalty

**Author's Note:**

> This will be a multi-chapter fic, though I'm not exactly sure how long it will be just yet. I have some fun plans for it.
> 
> Really I just wanted an excuse to dive deeper into Velvet's character, as I've always wished we could have seen more of him in the books. I feel like a character with his complex background could have had a lot of layers to his personality, so I'll be exploring my take on them in this fic. Raisa's and Velvet's POVs will alternate.
> 
> Note: Addiction to a fictional drug will be prominent in this fic. It's referenced and implied in the first chapter, but after that it becomes much more central and important to the story. Please keep this in mind, and stay safe!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warnings: Drug use and addiction, threats, discussion of death, non-graphic mentions of torture, moderate injury, mild language.

_The Raggers closed in on Raisa, and she backed away until she came up against the wall of the building._

_An older boy in a faded red velvet coat reached out and fingered her hair, and she slapped his hand away. He smiled, revealing a tongue bright red from chewing razorleaf. “You got any family, girlie? Anybody who might pay to get you back?” He leaned closer, and his razorleaf breath made her eyes water. He seemed jumpy and jittery, like leaf users often did._

She tipped up her chin defiantly. She did have a family—a more powerful one than this boy could even imagine, but she wasn’t foolish enough to tell him so and land everyone in trouble. Telling a street gang that she was the princess would, at best, lead to a hostage situation. At worst, another murder and Mellony being named the heir.

He took yet another step closer and she fought not to flinch, continuing to look him steadily in the eyes. She wasn’t going to be the one to back down.

But those eyes were seeming oddly familiar the longer she looked at them. The precise shades of hazel, the swirl of a darker brown through the irises, all of it was reminding her of something that she couldn’t exactly place. In fact, it might have been because she was so focused on those eyes that she saw the precise moment they widened with shock, preceding the confused tilt of the boy’s head by just a heartbeat.

The truth hit Raisa with the weight of a brick. She knew that inquisitive slope of his jaw when he saw something he couldn’t explain because she knew _him_. He was Magret’s nephew, Theo, the boy she had been friends with for years when they were both children. That was, until he had suddenly left to go live with his father one day when he was nine, and never returned. She’d not heard from him since, and had assumed that they left Fellsmarch entirely.

Apparently not. And apparently, if the look in those familiar eyes was any indication, he had recognized her too.

“Blood and bones,” he breathed, far too quietly for any of the other Raggers to hear him. Then, louder, as he turned to face the gang: “Cat, I got an idea. Permission to talk to the girlie alone to find some things out?”

The tattooed girl scowled. “Why? What’s the point?”

“I got a plan. It’ll just be five minutes, but I want to ask her a few things. That’s all. It’s about Flinn, Sarie, and Jed.”

“What’s that got to do with anything?” she pressed, her frown deepening.

“You’ll see. Just…trust me, all right?”

She sighed, then nodded once to grant permission. Raisa did her best to keep her expression neutral, hoping that Cat—who seemed to be in charge—wouldn’t notice the brief moment of recognition.

Theo gripped her arm as he led her back out the alley and around to another side street. She kept her head down as much as she could while still looking out for her surroundings. The last thing she needed was to run into Cuffs again while she was being escorted by someone who could possibly help her.

And if he couldn’t, or wouldn’t…well, one person was a lot easier to fight than half a dozen, and Amon and her father had taught her well.

Once they got to the end of the one-way street, and Theo had glanced around to make sure no one else was within earshot, he put himself between her and the exit with an expectant look. “All right, Raisa, what’re you doing here?” he demanded. “In the middle of the slums with Ragger colors?”

Her mind spun. She had been Theo’s friend—of course he would help her if he were to know that she’d been kidnapped and needed to get back to the castle. But if what she’d seen in the alley had been any indication, he knew people in the Raggers like that Cat who had cornered Raisa, and she didn’t want to get him in trouble with the gang for knowingly helping her go against what Cuffs had done to her. She didn’t know much about Ragmarket, but she did know that Cuffs was a Ragger too.

Still, she couldn’t very well let this opportunity slip by her. She had an opportunity to do good for her people, and who better to help her do it than her friend who lived in the city itself?

“I snuck away to learn more about what life is really like for the people outside of the castle close,” Raisa said, which was true enough. “A queen can’t expect to make good decisions for everyone if she doesn’t know what anyone is going through. Being confined in the castle isn’t doing me any good.”

“And it’s better to wander around the slums with a Ragger scarf?” he pressed.

She bit her lip. “I didn’t know it was a Ragger scarf. I found it and thought it might help me fit in better. I can’t go around waiting for people to recognize me, can I?”

Theo shook his head, amused. “A good job you did of that.”

“I didn’t know _you_ would be here. And why? What are you doing here? I thought you’d left to go live with your father.” That was what Magret had told Raisa, at least, the day she went to go talk to Theo and couldn’t find him anywhere. _No, I don’t think he’ll be back, Your Highness. His father’s taken him off to live with him, so he can’t stay. Oh, it’s all right, it’s all right. You’ve still got Amon, haven’t you? And your other friends at court._

His face darkened. “I did,” he said shortly.

It was plain as day that he didn’t want to answer further, but his response had hardly been useful to her when there was still so much she didn’t understand. “What were you doing with the Raggers back there, Theo?” Raisa persisted. “Asking that girl for permission just to talk to me, like she makes all the decisions. Are you…with them now?” There was a more concise way to phrase it, of course, but she didn’t know how to force the words past her lips. This was her childhood friend, and it seemed that she barely knew him anymore.

Theo tugged a Ragger scarf from beneath the lapels of his velvet coat. _Blood and bones of Hanalea._ “I am,” he replied, and he sounded confident. Unashamed.

As if he hadn’t just confessed to the princess heir that he was a criminal.

“But—but why?” she asked, momentarily at a loss for words. “It’s illegal—but you know that, of course—and there are countless other ways to live.”

“Things aren’t good outside of the castle close,” Theo said simply. “A lot of us don’t have a choice.”

Raisa blinked. “What do you mean?”

“I mean that if you’re not a blueblood and you can’t get a job, there’s nowhere for you to go but the streets,” he began, his hazel eyes brightening as he took a step closer to her. “And on the streets, you go cold and hungry most of the time, and what little you got gets taken away from you by the people who got none of it. And when you try to fight back, you realize it’s not just you against those thieves, it’s you against the whole world—and you lose.”

“But why don’t you go to the Guard?”

Theo drew even closer, and though she didn’t feel threatened yet, she could tell he was touching upon a topic important to him. He laced his fingers together, gripping his own hands so tightly his knuckles went white. “If you go to the Guard, they’ll throw everyone in gaol. One street rat’s the same as another to them. They’ll keep you there for weeks, months, torturing you to get you to give up your crew until they realize you don’t have one, and then they’ll keep on doing it because they can. You’ll get closer to starving to death in the Guardhouse than you ever did on the streets, and you’ll get sick ‘cause none of the bluejackets care if you live or die.”

He was directly in front of her now, his eyes wide and filled with the memories he was clearly reliving in his warning to her. “And when they finally let you go, or you manage to get out on your own, you’re right back where you started. Fighting the world again, and you’ll _always_ lose until you get other people to fight with you. You still might lose, but well, if you all go down, it’s better than dying alone. So don’t _tell_ me, Raisa, that it’s as simple as going to the Guard and getting a better life. There’s no better life for us, and all we do is survive.”

Raisa felt like he had struck her. This was her queendom, her city. How could she be unaware of so many of the horrors inside it? 

“Don’t look at me like that,” Theo snapped, sounding more upset than she’d ever heard him before. So, so much had changed. “You came here to find out what life is like, and here it is.”

He was right—she _had_ wanted to know this—but she never could have prepared herself for this truth. Still, she had to feign calm for the moment, or else she’d never be able to get away. “So you…work…with the Raggers? And their streetlord…Cuffs Alister, was it?” she added, hoping her tone didn’t betray her familiarity with him. She knew Theo, but that didn’t make it a good idea to explain that Cuffs had just kidnapped her.

“He isn’t our streetlord anymore,” Theo corrected, calming a little. The intensity remained in his eyes, though. “You met our new one earlier, Cat. And yeah, I crew with them, for going on a year and a half now.”

She considered this. She may not understand precisely what had led him here—and she knew that even if no one else was left to take him in, his aunt would take him back in a heartbeat—but she would be a poor princess indeed if she looked upon the suffering in her own capital city and ignored it.

_I am not my mother._

“I didn’t know about this,” Raisa confessed, gesturing to the alley around her to indicate the living conditions of what seemed to be nearly everyone in Fellsmarch. Everyone in Ragmarket, at the very least. “Thank you for telling me, Theo. The princess heir shouldn’t be so unaware, but it seems that I was. I’m sorry.”

“You don’t owe your apology to me,” he muttered, tugging at his scarf. “You, and your mother and all of them, owe it to the ones who aren’t around to hear it. The ones who’ve already died just for nothing to change.”

She supposed she deserved that, but she was _trying_ , and she had to start somewhere. “As soon as I get back to the castle, I will talk to my mother,” Raisa promised, rising to her full height with the most regal posture she could muster. “I’ll tell her everything you told me, and if that doesn’t work, then I’ll do something myself. Things can’t stay like this. In fact,” she added, her mind spinning with the perfect excuse to stay out of Cuffs Alister’s reach, “I’ll go back right away so I can talk to her about it. I’ve seen more than enough to warrant change.”

“Oh, Raisa,” Theo said, almost apologetically, shaking his head like he pitied her. “You have a good heart, but that can’t happen.”

“Why not?” she asked, taken aback. Why wasn’t he grateful to her for taking such immediate action?

He leaned forward, and she could smell the razorleaf on his breath again. “You see, three of my friends are in the Guardhouse right now.”

“Oh!” What was the proper response to that? “I-I’m sorry.”

“Yeah. And not because they broke the law either, but because the bluejackets want them to give up Cuffs Alister and they’ll do anything to get them to do it. But he’s not with us anymore, and they don’t know where he is. None of us do. They’ll be tortured to death.”

Raisa suddenly felt sick. She didn’t know the Raggers, and just yesterday she would have insisted that the Guard would never do such a thing, let alone to innocents. But after what Amon, Cuffs, and now Theo had told her, she had a much harder time believing it.

“But it’s hard to imagine what that means unless you know them,” he continued, his breaths coming quicker as his eyes bore into hers. “So I’ll give you an introduction. One is a girlie about your age, pale hair, a brand on the back of her hand from when she got arrested before. All her relatives died in the war. One is a bit older, older than most who’re on the streets. He’s quiet and mostly stays out of trouble; he’s only in the Raggers ‘cause we’re all he’s got. And one is our age but looks younger, he’s small and he gets sick a lot. He was by himself for most of his life until he found us. All he ever wanted was to be safe.”

She couldn’t imagine what it was like to have safety be a dream rather than something taken for granted. Raisa didn’t even know these people, but their descriptions were breaking her heart.

“Their names are Sarie, Jed, and Flinn,” Theo murmured, his voice dropping a little. “Now they’re not strangers to you, but I promise you I know them better. And I’ll be damned if I leave them there.”

“I’m truly sorry,” Raisa said, knowing full well that another apology wasn’t enough. “I’ll see if I can get the Queen’s Guard to release them. Who arrested them?”

“His name is Mac Gillen, but he won’t listen. If he found out that you knew what the Guardhouse is like, he’d just as soon kill you so he could keep on killing us.”

She folded her arms. “I’m the _princess heir_. My own guard would never even consider killing me.”

“Hush,” Theo chided, fluttering his hands to quiet her down. “Want to announce it to all of Ragmarket?”

Oh. She _was_ supposed to be in disguise.

“Sorry,” Raisa amended in a whisper, “but the point still stands. He’s under my command, and I can make him let your friends go.”

“It won’t work.” He shoved his hands in his pockets, looking down at his feet. “Trust me. If you went to Gillen, you wouldn’t be going back to your mother. Ever.”

It sounded ridiculous to claim that one of the Queen’s Guards would be openly hostile towards the princess they served, but she also knew that Theo had more knowledge than she in this matter. And if she really was risking her life by doing this, it would endanger the future of her entire country. “But there must be something I can do,” she insisted.

“Oh, there is.” Though Theo’s words should have been hopeful, they sounded like an apology. “You’re going to help us break them out.”

“What?” Whatever she had been expecting, it wasn’t that. “You want _me_ to break into the Guardhouse and illegally free some of the prisoners?”

Theo gave her a sad smile. “That’s exactly what I want you to do.”

“No,” Raisa said with an incredulous laugh. “Absolutely not. I feel sorry for your friends, and I want to help them, but I can’t do that. I’m the—you know why I can’t do that. And you said he wants to kill me, but you expect me to sneak in there anyway?”

“We’ll make sure you’re disguised better than you are now,” he assured her in a way that was far from reassuring. “Since I recognized you in about half a minute, and all they’d have to do is look between you and a girlie coin. But yeah, you know more about how the bluejackets work than any of us. We’ll get in there and you’ll help us spring them.”

“I _will_? I’ll do what I can, but I won’t break prisoners out of the Guardhouse.”

He took his hands out of his pockets, seizing her wrist. She tensed, ready to twist away, but he let go almost immediately. Instead, he drew closer again, until she was backed up against the wall once more. “Raisa, what makes you think you have a choice?”

_Is he threatening me?_

It occurred to her that she had only gotten into this mess by following the girl who claimed her sister was sick. This was Raisa’s punishment, it seemed, for trying to be a good ruler. A good person.

“Theo, you know me,” she said, a hint of fear creeping into her words. She didn’t think he would hurt her, but he clearly had a plan in which she played a part. One that she had no desire or ability to safely fulfill. 

“No, I used to know you,” he corrected, bracing his arms on either side of her to prevent her from leaving. “Well enough to feel sorry for what I’m doing, but not well enough to prioritize your comfort over my friends. My _family_. So you’ll help us break Sarie, Jed, and Flinn out of gaol, and then you’ll be free to go wherever you please.”

Raisa tilted her head, formulating a plan. She wasn’t going to go through with this—she couldn’t—but simply refusing wouldn’t be enough. She had to get away and run as fast as she could back to the castle. Or possibly to the Southbridge Temple, where Amon and her father might be waiting.

But no, they would be out looking for her. It was a comforting thought, but not a helpful one when she needed a place where she knew they would be. So the castle it was, and she would just have to escape from this alley first.

 _Hit hard and when they’re not expecting it_ , Amon had told her when they sparred together, relaying a piece of advice that his father had given to him.

“Free, you say?” she asked, noting how his eyes focused on her as he opened his mouth to answer her question. Before he could get any words out, she slammed her shoulder into his elbow, diving to the side when Theo stumbled back clutching his arm. Raisa may not have had much practical experience in combat, but she knew enough to be sure that joints weren’t _supposed_ to twist that way or make that popping noise when they did. Guilt washed through her until she remembered that he was trying to force her to put herself in danger and break the law, upon which she spun on her heel and ran towards the opening of the alley.

She had almost gotten to the Way when Theo crashed into her from behind, tackling her to the cobblestones. Sharp pain cracked across her chin as she hit the ground.

“Raisa,” he grunted, pushing away from her enough for her to rise to a half-sitting position on the street. Then she blinked, momentarily blinded by the hem of his velvet coat in her face. She brushed it aside, rising a bit more until she was eye-to-eye with him but still pinned down.

She was smaller than him, but she had injured the arm he wrote with. At worst, he would be clumsier in a scuffle. At best, his right arm would be incapacitated. She hated that she was fighting with a childhood friend, but he hadn’t given her much of an option.

With a quick blow, she threw as much power as possible into a strike to the same elbow she’d hit before. Theo yelped in pain, his arm giving way and allowing her to scramble away again. She had just leapt to her feet when Theo, strangely nimble in spite of his injury, dove forward and wrapped his left arm around her from behind.

And he was holding a knife.

“We both know I’m not going to use this,” he said breathlessly, “but please stop and listen to me.”

“Why should I?”

“It’s the least you can do after spraining my arm.”

“I wouldn’t have _done_ that if you had just let me go instead of insisting—”

“Oh, we’re still going to the Guardhouse,” Theo interrupted, wrenching Raisa around with one hand and tipping the blade beneath her chin. “You’re going to help free my friends, or we’ll keep you as a hostage to bargain with your mother. If Cat’s not in a merciful mood, we’ll kill you.”

If there hadn’t been a knife at her throat, her jaw would have dropped. It might have made her naïve, but even she hadn’t expected him to make such an explicit threat. “You wouldn’t,” she said reflexively.

“No, I wouldn’t,” he agreed. “But it’s not up to me, and Cat would.”

“I would rather die,” Raisa said immediately. “I’d rather die than endanger the Fells by doing something like this.”

Now _Theo’s_ jaw dropped, his red tongue flickering against his teeth in disbelief. “Do you hear yourself? I don’t think you understand that if saving three innocent lives could endanger the Fells, the Fells isn’t worth much.”

“The queendom does need fixing,” she admitted, “and I’ll do my best to fix it once I’m queen.”

“Well, the Raggers won’t be waiting. You can either save them or put yourself in our hands, though mostly Cat’s.” Theo raised an eyebrow. “Your choice.”

He was at least right in that it was a choice, but it was a bloody horrible one. She was far away from Amon and her father and even further away from her mother, with no idea where her original kidnapper was. It was a sad state of affairs when the princess heir could be captured twice in one day with no immediate repercussions.

Then again, it was also a sad state of affairs when the same princess knew next to nothing about how her own subjects lived, and did nothing to improve their futures. If she refused to help Theo, she would be handing herself over to the Raggers who might kill her. If she went along with this, she still might die, but she’d be able to see firsthand everything that Theo had been describing to her. And if his hasty plan ended up working, she would be able to do some good for those three Raggers who no longer felt like strangers.

It felt a lot like giving up, but Raisa would find a way out of this.

She had to.

“How will we get into the Guardhouse without them recognizing me?” she asked quietly. She briefly considered going without any further disguise and letting herself be recognized, but if his stories about Mac Gillen were true, her title might do her more harm than good.

Theo smiled. It wasn’t the bright, carefree smile she remembered from when they played together as children, but rather weighed down by a life on the streets and whatever else had led him here. “We’ll figure something out. But first I should introduce you to the other Raggers.”

“What? I thought you said it was my choice!”

“Not as a hostage,” he corrected, lowing the knife. He kept it in his hand, though, within easy distance from her. “They need to know what we’ll be doing, even if they don’t know the how of it. And I need to talk to Cat to get her to agree to let me go off by myself to the Guardhouse with only you as backup.”

“Forgive me for not knowing how the streetlord works,” Raisa began dryly, “but do you report your every move to her?”

Theo glanced down at the ground. “No, but this…well, it’s more dangerous than the rest, and it’s personal.”

“Personal? What, is she your sweetheart?”

“Yeah.” He met her eyes again. “Why are you looking like that?”

She bit her lip. The truth was that she was wondering what Magret would say if she were to see her nephew now, high on razorleaf in a Ragmarket alley with a streetlord for a girlfriend. “It doesn’t matter.”

Theo shrugged. “Suit yourself, but that answer won’t work with Cat. Now come on. You’ve got a fake name you’ve been using?”

“Rebecca Morley. I’m a tutor for the Bayars.” It would be simpler, Raisa decided, to use the same lie she had told Cuffs.

“A tutor, huh?” He snickered, then quickly sobered. “And don’t call me Theo anymore. I’m Velvet.”

Velvet? It was easy enough to see why he’d chosen that nickname, though it made her feel as if her old friend truly was lost to her.

Raisa forced a nod.

“Then let’s go,” he said, nodding towards the Way. “The hardest part will be getting Cat to make me in charge of this. If she finds out about you…well, it won’t be pretty, and we need you to get my friends out of there.”

Theo gripped her arm again, steering her back out of the alley and in the direction of the Raggers. Her mind was spinning with everything that had happened since she stepped foot in Ragmarket, but if—no, _when_ —she saw Amon again, she would at least be able to admit one thing.

She had definitely made a mistake. 


	2. The Glamor of the Gang Life

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Velvet takes Raisa back to the Raggers, where he explains his hasty plan to Cat in the hopes that she will allow them to continue. Afterwards, it's just a matter of making sure Raisa won't stand out in a crowd as the princess heir.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So sorry this update took so long!! I've been really busy. Hopefully things will be back on track soon, and I'll be able to keep posting regularly :D
> 
> Content warnings: Drug use and addiction, moderate injury, asthma attack, discussion of death, non-graphic mentions of torture, threats, mild language.

Well, this was unexpected. Not only was Raisa _ana_ ’Marianna in Ragmarket, but she had come _here_ of all places and given him the perfect opportunity to rescue his friends. The guilt for kidnapping her was still there, and it probably would be, but it was a lot harder to focus on when he considered the fact that without her the three Raggers would have even less of a chance of getting out of the Guardhouse.

Also, a lot of his guilt had been drained away by the throbbing in his elbow from where she’d twisted his arm. It was already swelling inside his sleeve and becoming difficult to move—not that he was eager to keep trying when he knew it would only hurt worse.

Raisa was silent as Velvet brought her back to where the other Raggers were waiting, for which he was grateful. Her announcing that she was the princess so loudly had been the kind of stupid that he just couldn’t deal with right now.

“What were you _doing_?” Cat’s voice carried down the alley, and he glanced up to see her hands on her hips as she stared them down. “That was a lot longer than five minutes.”

“We had a bit of a scuffle,” he said, opting for the route that wouldn’t betray Raisa’s identity but wouldn’t make Cat even more suspicious about what was going on. “And she tried to run. Nothing serious.” Never mind the fact that Velvet had lost that scuffle in his unwillingness to injure the princess heir.

Her expression didn’t change. “Mind telling me what’s going on?”

“Yeah,” Velvet said, lightly pushing Raisa forward so he could have a free hand. “Sorry. I thought I recognized her when I got closer—she’s a tutor for the Bayars, a blueblood family. She’ll help us break out Flinn, Sarie, and Jed.”

“Huh.” Cat tilted her head, considering it. “How’d you know her?”

 _How’d he know her?_ “Saw her going down the Way one time,” he improvised. “Back from the Temple Church.”

“She got a name?” Glancing over to look directly at the princess, she raised her eyebrows. “Or a tongue?”

“Rebecca Morley,” Raisa declared, her chin high and defiant.

Cat hummed thoughtfully. Velvet longed to ask her what she was thinking, whether this would work, whether she’d allow it, but he knew better than to rush Cat Tyburn while she was making a decision. He awkwardly reached into his pocket and put more leaf in his mouth, just to give himself something to do while he waited.

Thankfully, he’d barely begun chewing before she spoke again. “Well, what’ve you got in mind?”

“She knows a lot of bluejackets,” he explained, slipping the leaf beneath his tongue so he could speak. “And we’ll be able to get them out from the inside.”

What he knew Cat would understand, and what he hadn’t told Raisa, was that they’d hardly be able to walk into the Guardhouse expecting to emerge freely with the prisoners. They’d need to get themselves arrested first.

Or, more accurately, Velvet would get them both arrested. But she would have to play a part in it.

“I see,” Cat said, her eyes glittering in a way that said she really did see. “Know what we are, Rebecca?”

“You’re Raggers,” Raisa answered steadily. “And you’re the streetlord, Cat.”

“Well, I doubt the Bayars been saying much about me, so Velvet must’ve told. And if he figured you gotta know, then he got a reason, and you an’t going anywhere.” Then she swiveled back to face him again, and he groaned inwardly. Cat was so damned stubborn, and he loved her for it, but this time he _had_ to keep something from her.

He had to. If he told her that who Raisa was, Cat would kill her or hold her hostage for the queen, and the Raggers would still die in gaol.

He had to do it, and it was that simple. Nothing else for it. Still, he hated lying to his streetlord—lying to _Cat_ —all to protect someone who had already caused him a shocking amount of pain.

“I guess you already got a plan?” Cat asked him expectantly.

“Yeah, I swear. I…actually, Cat, can we talk about this? Just you and me?” It might be easier, he thought, to persuade her to let him go alone if he could help her see how serious he was about this. That it wasn’t some desperately foolish self-sacrifice.

She shrugged. “Sure. Jonas, take her to Pinbury. We’ll join.”

Once they were alone, she reached around his neck and laced her fingers through his hair, tugging his face down closer to hers. “Velvet, darling,” she murmured—and Cat wasn’t the type to use sweet names like that, so there had to be something else coming after. And, sure enough: “Have you lost your mind?”

“I don’t think so,” he said honestly. But really, he might have. “I promise I have a plan.”

“I’m sure you do, but a blueblood tutor an’t going to get farther than we done into the Guardhouse. We got nothing more than we did but a rich mark for the resurrection men once she’s caught.”

“But if all goes well, she won’t be,” Velvet continued. “I swear, I know what I’m doing. You got to trust me.”

Cat sighed. “’Less you’re gonna put it on the damned black and white, stop the promising. You _know_ I trust you, Velvet. I might be the lord, but all o’us take care of the crew when we need it. If you got a plan, you got a plan, and we’ll go along with it. Now c’mon.” She turned as if to follow Raisa and Jonas, leaving Velvet in shock that it had been so easy to convince her.

When he didn’t immediately follow, Cat rolled her eyes and grabbed his right hand to tug him forward. Nearly blinding pain burst in his elbow as it was wrenched out of its stiffness with a snap.

Velvet choked on a gasp and then on the razorleaf that he accidentally inhaled instead of swallowing. He doubled over, each rattling cough jostling his arm even worse. He knew, though, that the pain in his elbow was insignificant when he couldn’t stop coughing like this. About a year and a half ago he had come down with the summer fever around the same time he had a breathing infection from the awful air in Fellsmarch, and though he’d eventually recovered, his lungs had never really been the same.

He finally stopped coughing, but he still couldn’t draw enough air into his lungs. His breathing felt too shallow, almost ineffectual, and that familiar sensation combined with the unshakable panic was enough to make him lightheaded.

He felt Cat’s hands on his shoulder blades, steadying and supportive. He tried to relax—and that was the paradox, wasn’t it? It was easier for him to catch his breath when he was calm, but it was impossible to stay calm when he couldn’t breathe.

After what felt like an eternity, the air came a little easier and his lungs didn’t feel quite as useless in his chest. Slowly, Velvet straightened and turned to face Cat. Inhaling fully was still a struggle, but at least he wasn’t about to pass out anymore.

“What’s wrong?” Cat asked, a worried but stern edge to her voice.

“I’m fine,” he managed.

She raised her eyebrows. “All I did was grab your arm, and you whimpered, started choking, then had a breathing attack. I got no idea what happened, but you an’t fine.”

When she put it that way, bloody bones, Velvet was pathetic. He couldn’t argue, though, because he supposed that was exactly what he had done.

“She wrenched my arm in that alley,” Velvet muttered, “I choked on leaf, and then I couldn’t breathe.”

Cat scowled, cautiously reaching out to touch his right hand. “A bit of a scuffle?” she asked skeptically, repeating what he’d told her just before. “Nothing serious?”

“Well, it’s not broken. Could be worse.”

“What’s the worse? Working with the girlie who done it to spring our friends when she an’t got the least idea how to do any of that?”

There was an edge to her voice, and he wasn’t sure to whom it was directed. “Are you angry?”

“No.” Cat paused. “Yeah. A little. I know we got to get Sarie, Flinn, and Jed out, and you know I love you, but I _hate_ it when you’re this reckless.”

Velvet leaned closer to rest his forehead against hers, their noses brushing. “What else can we do? It’s because of Cuffs that they’re there at all, but we don’t know where he is and we can’t afford to wait.”

“I know.” Now she sighed, pressing a quick kiss to his lips before pulling away. “I just…this is my crew. I got to look out for all of them.”

“Aw, come on,” he said lightly. “I can look out for myself.”

Cat laughed mirthlessly. “But you don’t, so I still got to. Come on, let’s get back to the hideout. What’s the next part of your genius plan?”

And just like that, it was a genius plan that they were going to go along with. Even Velvet wasn’t sure if he’d call it genius, but he _would_ call it making the best of a bad situation, which was all that they could hope for even on a good day. Deep in his heart, he had known that Cat would agree eventually, but he still breathed an unsteady sigh of relief upon hearing it. Nobody had the time for a long argument over this, and Cat could be even more stubborn than their last streetlord.

The one who had, he supposed, gotten them into all this mess.

“We’re gonna make a scene,” Velvet said as they started to walk back to Pinbury Alley where Raisa and the other Raggers would be waiting. “Stage a robbery with her as my accomplice, get the bluejackets to clap us in darbies and bring us to the Guardhouse. Then we’ll break them out from the inside.”

Cat stopped walking. “Velvet.”

“Cat.”

“Do you have a death wish?”

“That part wasn’t even a surprise! I said that we were going to get them out from the inside—”

“I thought you meant by sneaking in, not by getting yourselves arrested! What if your breakout fails, huh? Then I got _four_ Raggers in gaol 'stead of three and we’re no closer to getting 'em out.”

Velvet shoved his hands in his pockets and kept walking. “If you think me and a tutor can sneak into the Southbridge Guardhouse, then fine, but that won’t end any better. This way we won’t have to waste time searching for our friends. We’ll be led right to them.”

“After getting beaten by bluejackets,” Cat muttered, “and that’s if they’re feeling like mercy.”

“If they are, we’re lucky,” he agreed. “And if they’re not, it’s an even bigger reason why we got to get the others out as fast as possible.”

They arrived at the entrance to their Pinbury Alley hideout, and Cat swiveled around to face him. “You’re acting real foolish, but we don’t got another choice, so I an’t going to argue too much. C’mon.”

Inside, Jed was in the middle of introducing Raisa to Sweets. She was barely concealing her horror at his youth, but kept herself together with a smile at the _lytling_ , who cautiously smiled back.

“Rebecca!” Velvet called, waiting for her to look up and see him at the doorway. “Introductions after. Now we need to get ready.”

“What is there to get ready for?” she asked.

He took a step forward, examining her face. It was too easily recognizable as the carving on a girlie coin—if the bluejackets were looking hard enough, they’d see it. They couldn’t change how she looked entirely, but they’d do what they could.

“We need you for your connections with the bluejackets,” Velvet said, “but that means we got to disguise you. Otherwise our cover is blown.”

Raisa’s eyes widened. “What do you mean to do?”

“Cut your hair, for starters—”

“No!” she exclaimed.

Everyone stared at her. He knew she wouldn’t be happy about that, but if she kept making such a scene over it, Cat would get suspicious. And Velvet had a strong feeling that Cat would want to find a few _other_ uses for the princess heir.

Raisa seemed to notice that too, because she immediately started backpedaling. “I-I shouldn’t be out here at all, but if I go back to the Bayars with short hair, they’ll know I snuck away and demand to know what happened.”

“You can come up with some kind of explanation,” Velvet assured her, his mind racing too fast to keep up with. Royalty fostered at the clan camps, right? He prayed to the Maker he was right as he continued, “You can say a family member was sick and you had to visit unexpectedly, then cut your hair while you were with them.”

Though she wasn’t pleased about it, she seemed to take his meaning. She stared into his eyes for a long moment before giving a single nod. “Fine.”

Velvet nodded encouragingly before pulling out his knife, resigning himself to a whole lot of pain while he tried to do this with his throbbing arm. Raisa flinched. “What are you going to do with that?”

“Cut…your hair?”

“ _You?_ ”

“Why shouldn’t he?” Jonas asked.

Raisa’s eyes flicked from the knife to the person holding it. “He’s…well, he’s high.”

Jonas just shook his head. “Velvet’s always high. He’s still better’n most of us with a blade.”

“I won’t do it if you don’t want me to, Rebecca,” Velvet told her. “But the other option is Cat, and I can promise that I’d probably be a lot more gentle.”

He watched her weigh the options. Would she rather get her hair chopped off by an injured ex-friend who admittedly _was_ under the influence, or by a deadly streetlord whose prowess with knives was rivaled only by her own with a garotte?

“Do it, Velvet,” Raisa muttered reluctantly.

He thought he saw Jed mouth the words “Good choice,” but he might have been mistaken. Shrugging it off, Velvet gestured for Raisa to follow him into one of the back rooms. It wasn’t much, just like the rest of their meager hideout, but it had a small mirror in it. They’d have to make do.

He kicked a small but sturdy chair over in front of the mirror, and Raisa sat. He leaned over her shoulder, making eye contact with her in the mirror. “Now, before I start, I’ll tell you something that should set your mind at ease.”

“If you feel the need to tell me that,” Raisa said unflinchingly, “my mind is not at ease.”

She was clever and quick on her feet, which Velvet respected, even though he had actually been trying to help. “Look, I was just trying to address your concern.”

“Which concern?” She raised an eyebrow. “That you’re forcing me into all of this?”

“I—no, not that concern. That you don’t want me cutting your hair while I’m high.”

Her shoulders deflated a bit, as though she had hoped he was about to address the other, much bigger, problem at hand. “I don’t think that’s an irrational concern to have. You’re hovering over my shoulder right now, and it’s impossible to miss the razorleaf on your breath.”

“Well, it helps me focus.” _And I’ll_ need _the damned focus after what you did to my arm._ “And I’ve been in life-or-death scenarios on the streets after taking leaf, and always made it out fine. This is nothing.”

She eyed the knife warily. “Forgive me for being wary about having that thing so close to my neck.”

Velvet smiled. “You’re forgiven.” He forced himself to raise his right arm, ignoring the surge of pain as he carefully picked up the ends of her hair. “Do you want me to talk? To distract you?”

Raisa laughed softly. “What kindness, from the boy holding me against my will.” She paused. “Fine.”

“So you just met Sweets, huh?” Velvet asked, even though he knew she had. He carefully sawed at the part of her hair that he held. It had to be uneven for her to look like a real Ragger, but he didn’t want to hurt her. “He’s fairly new to our crew.”

“I should hope so,” Raisa said, staying perfectly still. “He’s just a child.”

He nodded. “A lot of us started on the streets just as young—tell me if I’m hurting you—but like I said, better in a crew than on your own. I used to be in the River Rats before they were taken over by the Southies, and then I was on my own for a while until Cuffs let me join the Raggers. It was rough. Well, so is gang life, but not being alone makes a difference.”

Velvet should know—he’d been alone for longer than he liked to dwell on, and while things might not have gotten better, they’d certainly gotten easier since then. Since the time he got beaten by the bluejackets for petty theft until he could barely walk, since the time he nearly succumbed to starvation on a street corner until a stranger he never saw again had compassion, since the time he’d misjudged how much leaf he was taking and came far too close to being just another corpse for the resurrection men. The Raggers hadn’t fixed his disaster of a life, but they made it so much easier to bear.

He realized that he’d fallen silent. Shaking his head to clear it, he began speaking again.

“Cuffs was a great streetlord—brave, good, fair. Ragmarket isn’t safe, but you can’t help but _feel_ safe when you know he’s got your back. He wasn’t just a great streetlord either, he was a real friend to all of us, especially me.” Velvet gritted his teeth against the pain as he moved to the other side of her head, taking care to be as gentle as possible. “I wasn’t going to say this, but seems like I’m giving you my life story here, so I might as well. I used to be sweet on him for a little while, not that I ever said anything—”

Raisa inhaled sharply, and Velvet immediately froze. “Are you all right? Did I pull on your hair or something?”

“A—a little,” she said, haltingly.

He hadn’t been aware of it, but made an effort to pay more attention. “Sorry. But yeah, I never told him, and it got awkward fast because he and Cat were walking out together then. Eventually I figured things out and got over him, then realized that fancying the girlie he was with really wasn’t any better. He left the life, though, and Cat and I are walking out now.”

Raisa was staring into the mirror, not seeming to register the words he was saying anymore. “What’s wrong? Did I do it again?”

“No,” she murmured. “Just thinking.”

“About what?”

“About how I really don’t think I know you at all.”

Velvet swallowed. That might be true, but it didn’t mean he had to like the disappointed way in which she said it. “Maybe so, but don’t say that.”

“Why not?” She closed her eyes as he started trimming the edges of her hair irregularly. “Everything about you has changed.”

“The others aren’t listening to us right now, but for all you know, they could be,” he muttered. “Then Cat would find out who you are, and you don’t want that. Believe me, _Rebecca_ , I know that I’ve changed.”

Raisa bit her lip. “Do you really?”

“I really do.” Taking a quick look over his handiwork, Velvet put away his knife and nudged her shoulder to indicate she should look at herself in the mirror. He’d chopped her dark hair short, in a jagged way that suggested it had been hastily cut in the back room of a gang hideout. Funny thing, that. “What do you think?”

“It looks terrible,” she said honestly, her hand fluttering up to touch her head. “And”—her voice fell to a whisper— “I’ll never be able to explain this to my mother.”

He had _just_ told her not to say things like that, but apparently bluebloods didn’t learn how to listen. “The clan did it when you visited,” he breathed, barely loud enough to be heard. “Now shut up.”

Raisa fell silent, her eyes low and saddened. “Was this necessary to your plan where I help prisoners escape from gaol?”

“Only part of it. You can borrow some of Cat’s clothes to really look the part, and then we’ll go.”

She made no indication that she was about to go back to the other room, so Velvet placed his good hand on her shoulder. “Listen, I’m sorry. I really don’t have much of a choice. And it’s just hair.”

“No, it isn’t,” Raisa insisted, rising to her feet to look him in the eyes. “It’s the choices that I don’t get to make either, the problems you’re causing for me because you want me to solve all of yours. It’s the way you’re making me change who I am into something I’m not supposed to be. I don’t even look like myself anymore.”

“That doesn’t make you any less of yourself,” he assured her.

She just sighed. “How would you know?”

“Fair enough, Rebecca,” Velvet said as he spun her towards the doorway where the other Raggers would be waiting. “I really don’t think I know you at all.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So few things about Velvet are canon that I'm adding a lot to his character, so yes, Velvet has asthma and is bi now. I hope you enjoyed the chapter! The next one will be from Raisa's perspective as they get themselves into some trouble.

**Author's Note:**

> What did you think? Please leave kudos/comments if you enjoyed it!


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